Monthly Snapshot: Split-Second Acts of Kindness

Monthly Snapshot is a regular column here at Ani-Gamers in which one of our writers chooses a moment from some anime, manga, game, or other media that really made an impact on them in the past month. It's a valuable chance to compare the subjective ways in which we all experience and analyze media. To read previous entries, click here.

First off, I apologize for this article being very late (I mean, it's basically an entire month late — not ideal for a monthly column). I've already explained why our posts were delayed after the new year, so I'll get right into things here.

During the course of my research for my "Satoshi Kon Tribute" panel, which I am going to run at Genericon this February, I have been watching through many of the director's influences as well as the anime he worked on. So, after viewing the 1972 Slaughterhouse-Five movie and Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits (1981), I came to Roujin-Z, a 1991 OAV conceived by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira, Domu), directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo (Blood: The Last Vampire, Golden Boy), and featuring background art by none other than Satoshi Kon.

The show presents itself with an equal dose of black comedy and social commentary, similarly to Kon's own Tokyo Godfathers and Paprika. This tendency to mix the seriousness of the situation — a runaway machine originally intended to act as a caretaker for the elderly — with its inherent silliness manifests itself in what is easily the most spectacular turning point of the entire film.

Dedicated nurse-in-training Haruko has been trying to rescue her patient, the elderly Mr. Takazawa, from inside the Z-001 machine throughout the movie, but has run up against stiff opposition from the two bureaucrats in charge of the project, Terada and Hasegawa. As the two men board a helicopter to track the movements of the Z-001, Haruko hops in next to them, despite Terada's fierce protests. Meanwhile, we realize that Terada legitimately cares about the elderly as he berates Hasegawa for not letting him know that the Z-001 was actually a military prototype.

Suddenly Haruko spots the Z-001 speeding along a monorail track, and Terada orders the helicopter to go in for a closer look (never a good idea if Bubblegum Crisis is to be believed). As they approach, Terada throws open the door to yell out at the machine over a megaphone, but Haruko quickly attempts to jump out of the helicopter, screaming desperately to get the old man's attention.

What happens next is a brilliant expression of the essential messages of the entire film: Terada, who has been working to arrest Haruko throughout the story, grabs her before she can fall out of the helicopter, and holds her to keep her from jumping out again. She calls him a pervert, in typical anime style, yet Terada's immediate response to latching onto her is not to blush or get embarrassed, but to yell "You idiot! You'll get yourself killed!" In this brief moment of crisis, Otomo deftly shows the passion with which Haruko will protect her patient as well as the strength of Terada's conviction that all human life is sacred.

To cap it all off, the helicopter hits some trees while Haruko and Terada struggle, throwing the man out of the vehicle and toward the Z-001. Haruko immediately screams for Mr. Terada, only to see the machine reach out and grab him. (Indeed, even after he is safe aboard the Z-001, she tries to keep the helicopter flying low so they can safely extract him.) There is a cascading series of split-second acts of kindness in just these 45 seconds of film, all of which express a more optimistic twist to this ostensibly dark portrayal of the human condition.

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Review: Professor Layton and the Unwound Future (DS)

Genre: Adventure, Puzzle
Lead Designers: Akira Tago (Puzzle Master), Akihiro Hino (Producer), Usuke Kumagai (Lead Programmer), Jun Suzuki (Art Director)
Developer: Level-5
Publisher: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo DS
Release Date(s): Nov. 27, 2008 (JP), Sept. 12, 2010 (NA), Oct. 22, 2010 (EU)
Rated: E10+ for Everyone 10+

Professor Layton is back and his latest adventure is just as odd and charming as ever. Layton and his apprentice Luke are thrust 10 years into the future, and in the future random people are still ready to solve all problems — not through violence or debate, but through puzzle solving.

The plot is just as quirky as ever and, as with the previous games, becomes absolutely ridiculous at the end. However, in The Unwound Future, the plot becomes more ridiculous earlier, with moments such as the professor building a gun out of slot machine parts and fending off the mafia by shooting them with coins. Older characters are introduced somewhat haphazardly and some plot points feel rather forced. However, there is a welcome amount of character development in this game as we find out more about Layton's past as well as Luke’s.

I have no idea how they keep coming up with puzzles for the Professor Layton games. I would think that they would have to start repeating themselves more, but Professor Layton and the Unwound Future has an even greater puzzle variety than the previous games. So when the waitress asks you to solve a stacking puzzle before she gets you your drink, you don't have to worry about seeing the same puzzle but with more objects when you talk to her again later; you end up with a slider puzzle or a visual puzzle instead. While I do miss having increasingly complex variations on a single puzzle idea, the variety more than makes up for that. This also eliminates the problem of simply being bad at a certain puzzle and getting stuck as it shows up more and more often.

There are, of course, the slider puzzles and mathematical tricks, but they tend to have a little twist on them that makes them feel new, such as having to solve a slider puzzle in a certain number of moves. To facilitate these sometimes more complex puzzles, the memo system has been redone so that you can use different brush sizes and colors on your memo overlay. Especially welcome is the addition of an eraser brush — no more clearing all of your written notes because you made one mistake. Another welcome addition is the Super Hint, which all but solves the riddle for you. It is available after you use up the other three hints and costs an additional two hit coins. So on those puzzles that you just cannot seem to solve, you now have a way out.

While the plot does feel contrived at times, the puzzles and just plain quirky fun of the character interactions more than make up for it. The addition of more animated, fully voiced cutscenes also adds to the experience and never failed to put a smile on my face. The game is great fun and I look forward to the next Layton game.

[Highly Recommended]

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This review is based on a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.

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Review: What a Wonderful World, vol. 1 (Manga)

Medium: Manga (2 volumes)
Author: Inio Asano
Genre: Drama, Slice of Life
Publishers: Shogakukan, Inc. (JPN), Viz Media (Viz Signature imprint) (NA/UK)
Release Dates: May 19, 2003 (JP), Oct. 20, 2009 (US/UK)
Age Rating: “Older Teen” (16+)

Because I love starting reviews with some kind of admission, I want to say here that I have been putting off reading this manga for a long time. Since May, in fact. (Ed. Note: The review was written in August.) It’s not because I was rushed off my feet with other manga, but simply because I was afraid to crack it open for fear of it being too powerful for my weak psyche. Author Inio Asano also wrote Solanin, an amazing manga that I have a very hard time reading simply because it is emotionally powerful and I have to put the book down every 30 pages or so for fear of collapsing into a sobbing wreck.

Yes, I’m a wuss. Deal with it.

What a Wonderful World, or World as I shall shorten it from here on out for the sake of brevity, is thankfully not as emotionally harrowing as Asano's other works in part due to it's fragmented structure. The manga is split into individual vignettes, each focusing on a single character and giving you a brief moment in their life before moving on to someone else.

Each story is wonderfully crafted, effortlessly introducing you to the new main character so you connect with them instantly each time, often with just a single panel. One such story shows you a girl staring listlessly at the split ends in her hair, and suddenly you are right there with her for the duration for her tale.

From there on you are hooked, each panel containing just the right amount of (or lack of) art, speech and action to keep you fully engrossed. Like having a door opened to find a tiny snowman with cigarettes for arms, with nothing else to clutter the page in between. The easy flow of the storytelling on the page is remarkable, as you’ll find your eyes being drawn to the right place each time by the layout of both the panels and the items contained within. This helps the art pull off some amazing shifts in perspective to get you right into things without noticing how much the viewpoint has shifted.

All this helps you enjoy the stories on offer effortlessly, and break down any barriers between you and the drama playing out on the page.

The main theme the manga explores is that of thwarted dreams or expectations, and how the colorful cast of characters deals with them, or fails to do so entirely. The storylines contain just the right amount of grit and texture to give them depth without needing a cumbersome back-story to the issues that are presented, and at the same time they give you something meaty to chew on. The characters feel like actual people who have lived rather than blank slates who only begin to live when they are drawn. It’s very refreshing in general to read something that is not just about dreams coming true but instead about opportunities lost, or times when things have slipped away. It also manages to avoid feeling grim for the sake of it, maintaining a very welcome air of absurdity whether in the form of death taking the likeness of a crow, or a turtle climbing out of its shell to escape it's owner. Everything presented as part of the human characters feels instantly relatable and, if it hits close to home, rather personal. Well, except the whole thing with the turtle. I would probably need some form of therapy if that happened to me.

Not all is sunshine and rainbows, however. Reading a whole volume in one sitting, even with its amazing pacing, can get very wearing due to the poignancy of emotion that is on display. There is only so much biting realism I can take before it begins to cause my soul to ache and thoughts to turn to happier things, and for this reason I would recommend spacing out your reading of World. Another problem is that the stories can begin to feel predictable as you are immersed by the atmosphere of the manga. After a few pages of a new story you can guess how events will play out in a vague sense. This sucks a lot of the magic out of the stories and so is best avoided by putting the book down for another day.

There is also some confusion surrounding the overarching plotline, or perhaps lack of one. Multiple times even in this first volume you will see characters recur, but in their new appearance the situation will have changed and so any previous experiences with the character have to be thrown out in favor of the new story being told. When this first happens it is very disorienting, and I found myself exclaiming "Heyyyy, wait a second! Wasn't she supposed to be in a band now?" before I realized what was happening.

So would I recommend it? Sure. World is a solid and very enjoyable manga to read, for me because it feels like a more manageable version of the Inio Asuno I know from reading Solanin. It is also the first manga Asano published (Note: according to Wikipedia and other research) so it is useful to see the author’s development from here into his later works.

World is a welcome shot of reality packaged just right to prevent it from hurting if things strike too close to home. You'll come out of reading it feeling a little wiser, if perhaps wearier.

[Recommended]

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This review is based on a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.

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Review: Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines (PC)

Genre: Action RPG, Fantasy
Lead Creators: Jason Anderson (creative director), Leonard Boyarsky (executive producer), Tim Cain (design), Brian Mitsoda (lead writing, design)
Developer: Troika Games
Publisher: Activision
Console: PC
Release Date: Nov. 16, 2004 (NA), Nov. 19, 2004 (EU)
Rating: M for Mature

Based on Vampire: The Masquerade, the story-telling RPG designed by White Wolf, Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines places you in the shoes of a newly turned vampire whose sire (the vampire who turned you) is killed for breaking vampire law. You are set in the service of Prince LaCroix, the leader of the Camarilla vampires within the city, and are sent straight to Santa Monica for your first mission. The game spans across four districts of L.A., and the major goal of the game is to uncover a supernatural artifact called the Ankaran Sarcophagus for the Prince. The story goes very in-depth, and players will learn much about the different bloodlines, political sects, and hidden agendas of vampires and humans during both the main storyline and the numerous side quests available.

The game starts off on a positive note with character customization. You can choose from one of seven clans as well as gender, both of which influence subsequent dialogue options. From there, players can customize their character however they so desire, making for some rather unique combinations, including a seductive computer hacker, an intimidating gunslinger, or a persuasive brawler. Stats greatly influence not only dialogue but world interactions, such as lock picking, hacking into computers, and effectively fighting in combat, so planning ahead is key. If you choose a clan that goes against what you want, such as picking a Tremere vampire who uses blood magic while wanting to be a fighter, then you’ll have great difficulty in enjoying the game.

After character customization, you are shown several cinematics, in which the political background and foundation of modern vampiric society is displayed at its finest. The laws, known as the “Masquerade,” are extremely important in the game, and breaking vampiric laws results in a Masquerade violation. Invoking too many violations, such as feeding or using abilities in public, not only causes your fellow vampires to hunt you down, but also attracts the likes of witch-hunters.

The gameplay is rather basic; your job is to complete as many quests as possible, obtaining as much experience as possible, in order to make the strongest vampire ever. Easy, right? While the quests are indeed rather fun, the experience points rewarded are oftentimes a bit sketchy. There are times when players will think “only one point for killing a leader of a death cult?!” This can make leveling up your character seem tedious and unbalanced, particularly at the beginning of the game. Unfortunately the game can often be weighed down by the sheer amount of loading time. Every time you enter a building or area, be it a place you never visited or a place you have visited a hundred times, the game takes some time in loading the area. Most loading screens run rather smoothly and quickly, but the massive amount of loading screens (accompanied with tips on gameplay as well as information on the World of Darkness background) can also be tiring to go through, particularly if you’re merely visiting an area to view an email or talk to someone standing next to the door on the other side.

The sense of atmosphere in Bloodlines is extremely well done. Graphics are good on the whole, although cinematics (particularly when you choose a female character) could have been much improved. Timing always seems a bit off between sound and movement, and as a female character, you will take note that your chest is sunken in and your stature seems to have been designed to mimic a male character’s stature. Not something you want to see while listening for cues as to your next destination. The backgrounds are nicely designed, however, as the musical soundtrack adds a level of dimension that is quite impressive. The music is just right for the area: haunting themes in haunted mansions, pulse-pounding background to combat areas, and a nice mixture of techno and Gothic music for the number of clubs you visit during your travels. The dark, gritty feeling of L.A. is captured nicely, and proper attention has been given to buildings and scenery.

There are two major flaws in Bloodlines, however. The first is the combat system; it relies on your stats in combat (naturally), but it seems more like a “mashing of the buttons and praying you hit your target” system. Guns are practically useless, as they do little damage to supernatural entities (the exception being a shotgun), and even with a high skill level you will find that a majority of your shots miss for no apparent reason. Melee and fighting hand-to-hand are a bit better, as these attacks typically do more damage, but there is also an obscene amount of hitting-and-missing action going on. You can see the blade hit the enemy, yet it will register as a miss. The only fun part about combat is your vampiric abilities (each clan obtains three distinct powers), and even some of those are worthless in combat.

The other problem is that there are glitches everywhere. Literally everywhere. In fact, players who purchase the game must download Patch 1.2 from the official website in order to complete the game, since the game is known to crash at specific points throughout the main quest line. Once downloaded, however, there are still plenty of problems, including errors in items, dialogue options not appearing when they should, quest errors, and issues concerning character placement and camera. While all these glitches are rather minor things, they tend to add up to a frustrating overall experience.

Despite these two major flaws, the game itself is a unique addition to the RPG genre. The storyline is original and dark, and the amount of customization available to players, both for their character and for the development of storyline, is quite enjoyable. The fact that there are five available endings also makes Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines worthwhile to play over and over again, as players will be able to change sides each new night.

[Passable]

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This review is based on a retail copy purchased by the reviewer.

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An Apology (Then Back To Work)

Yes, it would seem that an apology is in order. I have been missing in action for about two weeks, which means (due to the current editorial structure of the blog) that Ani-Gamers has been missing in action for about two weeks. Luckily, the two big things that have caused this hold-up are related in some way to Ani-Gamers, so no "life got in the way" excuses here, folks. Plus, they're mostly out of the way, so we'll be back in business ASAP.

1. New Blogging Platform: For the better part of the two weeks since the start of the new year, I have been working night and day to construct a blogging platform based around this idea: Blogger isn't quite doing it for me and, being a perfectionist control freak, the best solution is naturally for me to build my own platform from the ground up, with every functionality made to fit my needs. It's still a little unpolished, but I've finished all the big things, so at this stage it actually could operate as the official Ani-Gamers blogging platform. I haven't decided yet if we'll be moving to it, but I'm currently looking into a web host to hold the new system and some cosmetic and organizational changes that might go along with it. I'll keep you all updated on that as things progress.
2. Genericon XXIV: As soon as I finished that colossal project, I moved on to Genericon, the anime/sci-fi/gaming convention for which I am Public Relations Coordinator (a job that I didn't really keep up with much during the two weeks of straight coding). I'm now working hard on organizing press coverage, guests, and featured panelists (including some folks you might know from around the Internet) while I get back into the swing of things here at Ani-Gamers. I'll be running two panels (my character design panel The Changing Faces of Anime and a new Satoshi Kon retrospective) at the Troy, NY convention, which will be held February 11-13, 2011 at my college, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Thanks for sticking with us through this embarrassing little hiatus. We all look forward to your continued readership and feedback!

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